50s thrift compared to now.

kezlou

I think the younger generation and especially rhose form the late 70's - 80's see the world st that time through rose tinted glasses.

I was born in 1982 and was brought up by my grandparents and heard many a time of how life was hard etc. My grandparents and parents were poor. They lived off pawnbrokers, lied about being pregnant to keep jobs and had loans to pay for goods. Not nice at all.

My grandmother didn't have a twin tub till the very late 1980's, and i remember the mangle being mused the kitchen. One of my jobs was helping her to cleans the dolls clothes for the local nursery.

I wouldn't wish to go back then, but i do like the nostalgia of a simple life. My nan or parents didn't teach me how to cook and as soon as the family moved out and ready meals etc were more available, my nan stopped making as much food from scratch.

I nearly cried two years ago during winter when we had ice on the bedroom windows and no heating. Can't imagine what it was like 60+ years ago.

Must admit though, i don't mind being called by my first name, both of my children call me by my name. What i hate being called is "so-so's mum" by the school.

Pitlanepiglet

I wouldn't want to go back, my grandmother was born around the time of the first world war so was in her 40's in the the 50's, the same age that I am now, she had suffered so much, lived through two world wars, seen countless male friend killed in combat, countless families who had lost loved ones.

My grandfather volunteered for war and spent five years in Burma, for most if that time she and my mum didn't know if he was dead, alive a prisoner or free. He came home a destroyed man and drank himself to death in the early 70's

I yearn for a simpler life but my grandmother was a brave brave lady and I wouldn't have wanted her life.

marleyd

Wow, I have really enjoyed reading this thread, it's so interesting!
It's amazing how things change so much over time. I was born in 1974, yet being a child in the early eighties, (relatively not so long ago) it seems a world apart from how life is now.
I too, would address elders formally, and closer elders always as "auntie / uncle". I still refer to my parents' neighbour (who they have lived beside for over 40yrs) as Aunty Barbara. And yes, I always address my true aunties and uncles with the prefix on their name. It doesn't feel right just using their names alone!
I think that the general respectfulness for others just isn't passed down to generations any more. Those of us that do make the effort of trying to pass these values down, then becomes somewhat undermined once the child starts becoming influenced by outside factors!
Hope to read more of your experiences, it's great to read true accounts, rather than just imagining what is was like!:)

thriftwizard

I think that the general respectfulness for others just isn't passed down to generations any more. Those of us that do make the effort of trying to pass these values down, then becomes somewhat undermined once the child starts becoming influenced by outside factors!

Wouldn't it be great if somehow we could pick the good bits of the past & carry them forwards, without the bad? I've been reading William Penn's letters to his wife from America, and his home life seems to have been idyllic, so I keep having to remember that a) he was homesick & seeing everything through the 1680's equivalent of rose-tinted spectacles, and b) whilst life may have been pleasant & much simpler for him & his wealthy family, it probably wasn't for the farm labourers and servants that kept it all ticking over, and most certainly wasn't for the Native Americans that his colony supplanted!

But I really do think there have been huge changes recently in some of the fundamental attitudes our young people are picking up, most of them not for the greater good. How many of us think happy slapping's funny? I was horrified to find that many of my kids' generation do, some of them otherwise thoroughly nice & well brought up kids - it's as if they don't see the person getting hurt as real, somehow. And if that makes me sound like a boring old f&rt,, I'm proud to be one and I want to know how we can begin to restore a bit of good old 1950s respect, compassion & neighbourliness!

westcoastscot

Glad I live in the back of beyond - dare I ask what "happy slapping" is???? Our young folks go to the fishing at an early age - too tired for trouble by and large!!!!!:rotfl::rotfl:

mytimetoshine2012

OberonSH wrote: »

I collect old household management books, and in the main they're 30's-50s. I notice the sheer amount of meals a woman was expected to produce from an incredibly small range of foods, and sometimes I look in my cupboards and cringe than I can't think of anything to cook for tea! Sometimes I feel like using the meal planners from the 30's for a week and see where it would get me!

Hi Oberon,

Which books are these please? They sound fascinating!

thriftwizard wrote: »

But I really do think there have been huge changes recently in some of the fundamental attitudes our young people are picking up, most of them not for the greater good. How many of us think happy slapping's funny? I was horrified to find that many of my kids' generation do, some of them otherwise thoroughly nice & well brought up kids - it's as if they don't see the person getting hurt as real, somehow. And if that makes me sound like a boring old f&rt,, I'm proud to be one and I want to know how we can begin to restore a bit of good old 1950s respect, compassion & neighbourliness!

Yes this is what I think too and I was born in the 1970's. Young people in general don't know they are born. They have a throwaway mentality for everything. Usuually they don't have to work to get anything and buy things like their ipads, phones and pods on credit rather than save up. Then they don't look after it because a new one will be out in a couple of years so they have that. They have little concept of saving up and cherishing anything. Parents spend far too much at christmas and on birthdays one of my friends bought her 4 yearold a hand held games console £120 as one of his pressies and they come to view this sort of thing as normal. They then have little concept of how to interact with others and lack the emotional development that older generations have. When it comes to 'happy slapping' or other types of violence they are disassociated from it and their mornic response is the answer.

It seems to be a combination of things that cause this and I know that for some it is different and some teenagers and young people are great (but then tehy are not the ones you see lurking around town or in starbusks!). There is a young 19 year old in our nightschool class and she is hard up and struggles with money but she says that at work the other people her age take the !!!! out of her becasue she takes her lunch to work and a flask of drink instead of buying anything. Comments like "I just wouldn't bother rather than be seen like that" upset her . She also gets berated for having a payg mobile rather than a fashoinable one and not having the latest fashions. It seems that these things mean more to the youth of today rather than manners, morals and respect for self and others. It is sad.

ladylouise62

I grew up in the sixties with no central heating, technically an outside bathroom/loo (the outbuildings were attached to the house by wooden walls and roof and with a paraffin heater in winter (you never dared have constipation in winter! ) , new clothes being a special occasion (a new coat would cost a weeks wages or more when most of that was already accounted for by daily bills, and hand-me-downs were the order of the day), and just one pressie for Christmas (the stocking was mostly sweets and fruit/nuts).

I don't have to struggle to have enough to eat at the end of the week, and I have the ability to heat the house (if not the money at present), but the simplicity of my earlier years and the way that 'buying stuff' wasn't the be-all and end-all is very attractive. We wouldn't want to just return to the 50's, but I really think that a little less consumerism and a little more simplicity would make us a little happier - there's nothing better that achieving something rather than just buying it.

Also, having been sucked into constant information (radio/tv/computer on all the time, even when out and about), I am purposefully 'switching off ' at times and have found it very relaxing, allowing my brain to wander more and be more inventive.

Mojisola

SailorSam wrote: »

We talk now about how much trouble gangs of kids cause in the street and say it wasn't like that when i was growing up, we had respect. But going back to the 50s people complained about 'teddie boys'

Not to mention the like of the Kray twins in every major city in the country. And the slum landlords and the loan sharks - ordinary people couldn't get a bank account, let alone a loan so had no choice but to get tangled up with criminals.

And don't even start to think about taking women back to the situation they were in then!

Signs on house rentals - No Irish, No Blacks.

Being homosexual meant you risked prison unless you hid what you were.

As ladylouise62 said, if some of the good things could be brought forward life could be better these days but go back to how it was, no thanks!

Hardup_Hester

I was born in 1951, we had a coal fire in the back room & no other heating in the house & an outside toilet down the yard past the coal shed & no bathroom.
My mother married far too young & soon lost interest housework or cooking etc, deciding she'd rather have career, proper meals were practically unknown, I was the child who always had a droopy hem & no elastic in the leg of my knickers & wearing my dad's socks, my mother always considered herself to be better than any of the neighbours, heaven knows why.
Thankfully I was an only child, though I would have loved a sibling, life would have been even harder. We were no better or worse off than the neighbours but due to lack of interest/knowledge never seemed to manage to even have the basics that most other family's had. We were definately
the sort of family they describe as 'Fur coat & no knickers'.

tallyhoh

We lived in a 2 up 2 down, outside shared loo, no bathroom, one cold water tap house. There was no garden but a sort of cobbled yard affair.

If we came home at night & switched the light on you saw the flash of silverfish & other nasties disappear under the skirting board. We had a coal fire downstairs which was rarely lit.

We rented a cooker off the council which was paid along with your rent. Baths were in a tin tub.

I can remember organised fights between men to settle disputes, teddy boys (who terrified me) loads of stray dogs & cold, always cold.

I read the old newspapers at our local archives a lot, there was more crime than people tend to remember, especially juvenile knife crime. Suicides were in the paper every week, mainly by gassing, if you survived you were prosecuted.

The 1950's were not that nice for the majority of working class people.